SAM ALLARDYCE has claimed his Newcastle sacking hit him so hard his wife urged him to give up football.

And the West Ham boss insisted Andy Carroll and Kevin Nolan never wanted to leave St James’s Park either.

The trio of ex-Toon stars return tomorrow with the happy Hammers sitting above Newcastle in the Premier League table.

Allardyce won both matches against them in his next job with Blackburn and insisted he feels “no animosity” towards Newcastle or owner Mike Ashley.

He even said the Toon owner has now “worked out” how to run a club by giving Alan Pardew an eight-year contract.

But the 58-year-old, who boasts his skin is as thick as a rhino, is clearly still scarred by his dismissal after only 21 Premier League games in January 2008.

He said: “You are always upset when you lose your job – it is a very distressing time for you and your family.

“It was the hardest one to take because I thought the job was the right one. I thought it was the next step, a big club, big fanbase, big budgets. And unfortunately I never saw any of that.

“My wife Lynn said I should give up. She said, ‘For God’s sake, ‘you’re better off out of it, is it worth it?’”

Nolan and Carroll have both played for Newcastle against West Ham twice – and both have scored in each game. The Hammers captain has found the net four times already this season while the on-loan England striker is looking for his first.

Allardyce added: “This game is far more important for Kevin and Andy than it is for me.

“Those two players served Newcastle brilliantly before they left and they will want to do very, very well. I don’t suppose either of them really wanted to leave. There were circumstances that they had to leave but not because they wanted to.”

Meanwhile, Pardew said yesterday he would like Carroll to join Newcastle again.

The Newcastle boss has credited the £35million sale of Carroll to Liverpool as the catalyst for rebuilding his team.

But he says Carroll, now on loan at West Ham after his move to Anfield flopped, will end up back on Tyneside one day.

The former Hammers boss said: “He’s a Geordie and at some point I hope he does come back here. Whether that’s in my time I don’t know.

“I like him, I like working with him, he was brilliant for me.

“There is still a place at the highest level for a player of Andy’s qualities.